Effortless English: Learn To Speak English Like a native

The Second Rule: Grammar Study Kills Your
English Speaking
The second rule of the method is the most shocking for most learners. After years
of studying English in schools, most people believe that grammar study is the key to
English speaking. In fact, many learners simply cannot imagine learning English
without studying grammar rules. They have strong beliefs deeply programmed by
the hidden curriculum.
That is why the second rule is such a huge change. The second rule of the
Effortless English™ method is: Do NOT study grammar! Now I know this might be
a tough idea for you to accept. Let’s face it: for as long as you’ve been studying
English, you have been told that you must learn grammar rules – in middle school,
in high school, in university, in language schools, everywhere in the world it’s
grammar, grammar, grammar, grammar.
So my first question is: How did this strategy work for you? Was it successful? If
you are reading this book, you’ve likely studied English for years and you focused
a lot on grammar rules. But can you speak English easily, quickly and automatically
right now? Did all of this grammar study produce the result you want?
If the answer is no, you are normal. Because despite what you learned in school,
the truth is that grammar study actually hurts your English speaking. The problem
with studying grammar is that instead of speaking English you focus on 
analyzing
it.
You become like the soccer player who is studying physics in order to improve.
You learn a lot of information but your skill never seems to get much better.
In other words, you 
think 
about English instead of doing it. You think about the
past tense, the present tense, the future, the present perfect, the past perfect. Now for
writing English, that’s not as bad. When you write English, you have time. You can
think about things slowly and take your time. You can erase your mistakes. It’s less
of a problem. You don’t need to write fast.
But when it comes to speaking, there’s no time. You don’t have time to think
about the rules for the present perfect tense in English when you are talking to
people. If someone asks you a question, you have to answer it immediately. You
don’t have time to think about prepositions. You don’t have time to think about verb

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tenses, possessives, phrasal verbs – all the other linguistic terms you’ve learned.
There’s no time.
A student of mine in Barcelona named Oscar once struggled with this very issue.
He wanted to improve his conversational skills, however, all he could think of was
grammar. 
Should I be using present perfect or another tense?
That kind of thing. He
said he felt like he was chained up and the words just wouldn’t come. So he stopped
studying grammar. Over the next few months, his speaking dramatically improved.
“It just started flowing out instead of me consciously thinking about it.”
Research supports this, which is why linguists like Stephen Krashen recommend a
more natural approach. Learning a language, Krashen notes, “doesn’t require
extensive use of conscious grammatical rules and does not require tedious drill.”
In a meta-analysis of grammar instruction, researchers found that studies over the
last century have failed to find a significant effect for the teaching of grammar
directly. The research is clear: Learning grammar rules does not improve your
spoken grammar. You have seen this with your own speaking. How many times have
you made a grammar mistake when speaking, even though you “knew” the correct
rule?
For example, many students who do well on grammar tests have terrible spoken
grammar. They can tell you that the past tense version of “teach” is “taught.” Yet,
when speaking, they will say “last year he teach me.” They know the rule
intellectually, but this does not help their speaking.
Another common problem is slow and hesitant speech. While speaking, a student
will constantly be thinking of verb conjugations. All this analyzing slows their
speech, making it painful and unnatural for the listener. Even when they manage to
speak correctly, they kill natural communication by being so slow and hesitant.